Moses Pendleton has been making dances and performance pieces for more than 50 years. He was very good at it when he started, coming out of Dartmouth College in 1971 as a co-founder of the dance company Pilobolus (pilobolus is a kind of fungi), and he has gotten better and better at it over the years. This week his company, Momix, is at Jacob’s Pillow, presenting an eclectic survey of the company’s work over the last 20 or more years. If you look closely at the 16 pieces on the program, you can arguably see some of the arc of Pendleton’s artistic vision. And, as his biography states, over the arc of that career, Pendleton’s artistic vision has focused on “illusionistic choreography.”
One of the hallmarks of Pendleton’s work is that even though it can be physically or visually very complicated, it somehow retains simplicity. He takes an idea and he works it, experimenting and going off in various directions, eventually taking it to a logical conclusion. But his creative inventions during a piece are almost never overwrought. What happens during the works, the twists and turns, is organic, and they flow. He neither forces his vision nor works it to death. He has the maturity to take his ideas to a logical conclusion, not necessarily the only logical conclusion. And his musical choices are uniformly perfect. He knows exactly how to use music to cradle and enhance his concepts.
Initially, Pendleton was regularly focused on the strength, power, and flexibility of the human body. The performers were simultaneously dancers and gymnasts, utilizing the absolute best of both those worlds as they performed. Sometimes it was the partnering that was astounding. It was often impossible to even understand how two, or four (or more!), bodies could assume the interwoven shapes they got into, let alone figure out how Pendleton conceived of the shapes. Other times he was interested in visual imagery, with inventive costuming or props enhancing that imagery in spectacular ways.
As the world has advanced technologically, so, it seems, has Pendleton. He now uses projections and other visual and lighting devices and much more complex and demanding costuming—amazingly engineered costuming—and props in the work. Thankfully, although the pieces are more complicated visually and technologically, they still manage to retain much of that signature organic simplicity.
For this viewer, the pieces on the program that were the most powerful were the ones in which the human body was always present as a human body in the work, even if it regularly got “lost” in the illusions. “Marigolds” from the work “Botanica,” for example, and “Echoes of Narcissus,” also from “Botanica.” The costumes in “Marigolds” were a wonder, transforming from a headpiece to a ballet tutu to a Flamenco dress over the course of the piece. Although there is reference in the company notes, the program does not actually credit costume design or construction to this or any or the pieces, which is a shortcoming.
“Table Talk” is classic Pendleton. Just a very physically strong and powerful dancer and a sturdy table on the stage. What are the dance, movement, and interaction possibilities? It turns out they are many, each one more interesting and breathtaking than the next. Teddy Fatscher, who performed the solo wonderfully last Wednesday evening, danced with that table.
The finale is full of sight gags, crowd pleasing and wonderful. It was beautifully danced by this company of very strong dancers. Especially notable was the dancers’ comic timing, which was perfect and carried the piece along to its exhilarating end. Momix will be at Jacob’s Pillow through Sunday, July 28, and it is very much a company well worth seeing.
